Bill Holmes - Activities - Women - Men v Women

Of course there are exceptions to every norm. These are generic observations.

Genetic differences:

Men and women differ in countless ways, many of which they aren't even conscious of. Here are just a few of those differences.
1. A woman has greater constitutional vitality, perhaps because of her unique chromosomal patten.
    Normally, she outlives a man by about five years in the United States.
    Females have a stronger hold on life than males, even in the uterus.
    More than 140 male babies are conceived for every 100 females, by the time birth occurs the ratio is 105 to 100, with the rest of the males dying in spontaneous abortions.
2. Men have a higher incidence of death from almost every disease except three related to female reproduction and breast cancer.
3. Men have a higher rate of basal metabolism than women.
4 The sexes differ in skeletal structure, women having a shorter head, broader face, less protruding chin, shorter legs and longer trunk.
    The first finger of a woman's hand is usually longer than the third; with men the reverse is true.
    Men's teeth last longer than do those of women.
5. Women have a larger stomach, kidneys, liver and appendix, and smaller lungs than men
6. Women have three very important physiological functions that are absent in menstruation, pregnancy and lactation.
    Each mechanism influences behavior and feelings significantly.
    Female hormonal patterns are more complex and varied.
    The glands work differently in the two sexes. For example, a woman's thyroid is larger and more active; it enlarges during menstruation and pregnancy, which makes her more prone to goiter, provides resistance to cold, is associated with the smooth skin, relatively hairless body, and the thin layer of subcutaneous fat, which are important elements in the concept of personal beauty.
    Women are also more responsive emotionally, laughing and crying more readily.
7. Women's blood contains more water (20% fewer red cells). Since red ceIls supply oxygen to the body, she tires more easily and is more prone to faint. Her constitutional viability is therefore a long-range matter.
    When the working day in British factories, under wartime conditions? was increased from 10 to 12 hours, accidents among women increased 150%; the rate of accidents among men did not increase significantly.
8. Men are 50% stronger than women in brute strength.
9. Women's hearts beat more rapidly than those of men (80 beats per minute vs 72 beats per minute).
    Their blood pressure (10 points lower than men) varies more from
minute to minute, but they have much less tendency to high blood pressure -- at least until after menopause.
10. Female lung capacity is about 30% less than in males.
11. Women can withstand high temperatures better than men due to differences in their metabolism.
12. Men and women differ in every cell of their bodies, because they carry a different chromosomal pattern.
    The implication of those genetic components range from obvious to extremely subtle. For example, when researchers visited high school and college campuses to study behavior of the sexes, they observed that males and females even transported their books in different ways. The young men tended to carry them at their sides with their arms looped over the top.
    Women and girls, by contrast, usually cradled their books at their breasts in much the same way they would a baby.
    Who can estimate how many other sex-related influences lie below the level of consciousness?
-- Dr James Dobson is founder and chairman emeritus of Focus on the Family.

Besides genetic differences, there are childhood experiences that unnecessarily confuse and compromise male-female

Communications:

Most women use an order of magnitude more words than needed to communicate anything.  We men try to pay attention through all the excruciating detail, and try to participate if there is a break in the unending drone, but we often zone-out or drift off to other thoughts if we don't fall asleep.  Then women complain about men being uncommunicative.

Most women cannot engage in an abstract discussion about religion, politics or people in general.  In short order, they make it a conversation about them.

I witnessed my neice and six girlfriends practicing back-handed complements as a means to humiliate someone. They also discussed who to target for abuse the next week at high school. I suspectback-handed complement training and the humilation experienced by it leads women to suspect the intent of everyone. When someone says or does something, a woman wonders what they really mean, and invents stories to rationalize their suspicians.

Unless they have learned to manipulate women by toying with their paranoia and vanity, men say what they mean and mean what they say - simple. While Machiavellian men are amused by the tendency of women to substitute the complex for the obvious, the simple-minded majority of men are thoroughly confused by it. "Why does she think Y when I said or did X?"

For example, when women are overheard on their telephone, it sounds like "he said, she said, I said, she said he said ..." for hours. When men are overhead on their telepohone, it sounds like "Yeah, 4. OK, bye."

Back-handed complement training should be discouraged, and children should be alerted to it to discourage perpetrators.

Expectations:

Women spend much of their childhood playing with dolls that have houses, furniture, cars, clothes, girl friends, boy friends, marry and have children. The result is often an adult expectation that matches the fantacy formed during childhood. It is a sequence of events. After puberty, women find real-world examples of things that correlate with those in steps in the plan.  Men may play with GI Joes, but the imagined activity is limited to battles. It seldom results in a career choice or life plan.

Women will rarely reveal their expectations to men for fear of alienating them. Even after capture by marriage, women manipulate men to follow the plan rather than reveal the plan. Men are happy with the sex-and-fun status quo of dating or living together when women work at being charming and agreeable in order to advance the plan. After marriage, women become obcessed with moving forward to the next phase of their plan, and strain the relationship to the limit to make progress on the plan, leaving men wondering what happened to the status quo.

If the rate of plan progress is unsatisfactory, the woman is unhappy. Exasperation with a lack of progress or the realization that the plan will never be achieved with husband #1, women move on the husband #2.  My first wife and her childhood girlfriend were so obcessed with living in a house in Palos Verdes, she was never satisifed with the houses we owned in San Diego.

Men should always insist on a detailed contract to expose the expectations of a women before marrying her, and vice versa. With expectations properly set, a man and woman can advance a compromise plan without significant conflict.